Hello all. Ive been seeing very small (nearly nonexistent) gains with my overclocking while in SLI.

when i had just one BFG 7950 GT, i got somewhere in the neighborhood of 5350 points in 3dMark06, at stock frequencies of 565 and 715. At 610 and 775, i got 5800 points after a little minor tweaking.

then i built a new system with a M2N SLI Deluxe board and the same 4600+ processor i had before. with one card, i got the same 5350 or so. in SLI mode, i got 7950 points, plus or minus twentyfive. i went to overclock with the NTune utility and i dont think i ever scored any better than 8000. thats a net gain of twenty five points (assuming the highest score wasnt just a fluke) with 45 more mhz on the core and 60 on the ram. i know 3dMark isnt everything, so i ran the benchmarking tool in FEAR just to make sure, and the results were the same. i tried the 91.47 drivers and they dont seem to help. they actually seem buggier, so i went back to 93.71. ATI Tool didnt do well at all (SLI compatibility?). is there a better program to use?

Hello all. Ive been seeing very small (nearly nonexistent) gains with my overclocking while in SLI.

when i had just one BFG 7950 GT, i got somewhere in the neighborhood of 5350 points in 3dMark06, at stock frequencies of 565 and 715. At 610 and 775, i got 5800 points after a little minor tweaking.

then i built a new system with a M2N SLI Deluxe board and the same 4600+ processor i had before. with one card, i got the same 5350 or so. in SLI mode, i got 7950 points, plus or minus twentyfive. i went to overclock with the NTune utility and i dont think i ever scored any better than 8000. thats a net gain of twenty five points (assuming the highest score wasnt just a fluke) with 45 more mhz on the core and 60 on the ram. i know 3dMark isnt everything, so i ran the benchmarking tool in FEAR just to make sure, and the results were the same. i tried the 91.47 drivers and they dont seem to help. they actually seem buggier, so i went back to 93.71. ATI Tool didnt do well at all (SLI compatibility?). is there a better program to use?

when i had just one BFG 7950 GT, i got somewhere in the neighborhood of 5350 points in 3dMark06, at stock frequencies of 565 and 715. At 610 and 775, i got 5800 points after a little minor tweaking.

then i built a new system with a M2N SLI Deluxe board and the same 4600+ processor i had before. with one card, i got the same 5350 or so. in SLI mode, i got 7950 points, plus or minus twentyfive. i went to overclock with the NTune utility and i dont think i ever scored any better than 8000. thats a net gain of twenty five points (assuming the highest score wasnt just a fluke) with 45 more mhz on the core and 60 on the ram. i know 3dMark isnt everything, so i ran the benchmarking tool in FEAR just to make sure, and the results were the same. i tried the 91.47 drivers and they dont seem to help. they actually seem buggier, so i went back to 93.71. ATI Tool didnt do well at all (SLI compatibility?). is there a better program to use?

Your video cards will be able to only run so fast with a certain processor speed, so try overclocking the CPU itself to see if you notice any differences. I've got a 4200+ overclocked to 2.55GHz and it runs perfectly stable, so try doing the same to yours.

Hello all. Ive been seeing very small (nearly nonexistent) gains with my overclocking while in SLI.

when i had just one BFG 7950 GT, i got somewhere in the neighborhood of 5350 points in 3dMark06, at stock frequencies of 565 and 715. At 610 and 775, i got 5800 points after a little minor tweaking.

then i built a new system with a M2N SLI Deluxe board and the same 4600+ processor i had before. with one card, i got the same 5350 or so. in SLI mode, i got 7950 points, plus or minus twentyfive. i went to overclock with the NTune utility and i dont think i ever scored any better than 8000. thats a net gain of twenty five points (assuming the highest score wasnt just a fluke) with 45 more mhz on the core and 60 on the ram. i know 3dMark isnt everything, so i ran the benchmarking tool in FEAR just to make sure, and the results were the same. i tried the 91.47 drivers and they dont seem to help. they actually seem buggier, so i went back to 93.71. ATI Tool didnt do well at all (SLI compatibility?). is there a better program to use?

Your video cards will be able to only run so fast with a certain processor speed, so try overclocking the CPU itself to see if you notice any differences. I've got a 4200+ overclocked to 2.55GHz and it runs perfectly stable, so try doing the same to yours.

[quote name='Exitios' post='2229' date='Dec 11 2006, 04:45 PM']
Your video cards will be able to only run so fast with a certain processor speed, so try overclocking the CPU itself to see if you notice any differences. I've got a 4200+ overclocked to 2.55GHz and it runs perfectly stable, so try doing the same to yours.
[/quote]

i hadnt really considered that. do you really think the processor (and ram too, i guess) would bottleneck it that bad? ill overclock the processor a bit and see if i start seeing gains with overclocking the GPU's.

Your video cards will be able to only run so fast with a certain processor speed, so try overclocking the CPU itself to see if you notice any differences. I've got a 4200+ overclocked to 2.55GHz and it runs perfectly stable, so try doing the same to yours.

i hadnt really considered that. do you really think the processor (and ram too, i guess) would bottleneck it that bad? ill overclock the processor a bit and see if i start seeing gains with overclocking the GPU's.

[quote name='Mr.Goat' post='2230' date='Dec 11 2006, 04:59 PM']
i hadnt really considered that. do you really think the processor (and ram too, i guess) would bottleneck it that bad? ill overclock the processor a bit and see if i start seeing gains with overclocking the GPU's.
[/quote]

You'll probably be surprised, though more in the aspect of your CPU bottlenecking your GPUs. Try upping your speeds (I believe the stock for your processor is 2.4 GHz) to 2.5 GHz, just to see if there's any improvement. If there is, just keep stepping it up by about 100 MHz until you either see no performance gain or the CPU becomes unstable. Just remember to check to see how toasty things are getting under the heatsink...:rolleyes:

i hadnt really considered that. do you really think the processor (and ram too, i guess) would bottleneck it that bad? ill overclock the processor a bit and see if i start seeing gains with overclocking the GPU's.

You'll probably be surprised, though more in the aspect of your CPU bottlenecking your GPUs. Try upping your speeds (I believe the stock for your processor is 2.4 GHz) to 2.5 GHz, just to see if there's any improvement. If there is, just keep stepping it up by about 100 MHz until you either see no performance gain or the CPU becomes unstable. Just remember to check to see how toasty things are getting under the heatsink...:rolleyes:

[quote name='Exitios' post='2231' date='Dec 11 2006, 05:27 PM']
You'll probably be surprised, though more in the aspect of your CPU bottlenecking your GPUs. Try upping your speeds (I believe the stock for your processor is 2.4 GHz) to 2.5 GHz, just to see if there's any improvement. If there is, just keep stepping it up by about 100 MHz until you either see no performance gain or the CPU becomes unstable. Just remember to check to see how toasty things are getting under the heatsink...:rolleyes:
[/quote]

i overclocked the cpu 108 mhz through Ntune, and gained 245 3dmarks. then i overclocked my cards and got another 170 or so marks. thats not quite as much as id like to see out of the cards on the overclock i use, but its more than i had, so maybe i am bottlenecked.

btw, i went to 93.81 beta drivers, and they didnt work too well for me. so back to 93.71 i went.

You'll probably be surprised, though more in the aspect of your CPU bottlenecking your GPUs. Try upping your speeds (I believe the stock for your processor is 2.4 GHz) to 2.5 GHz, just to see if there's any improvement. If there is, just keep stepping it up by about 100 MHz until you either see no performance gain or the CPU becomes unstable. Just remember to check to see how toasty things are getting under the heatsink...:rolleyes:

i overclocked the cpu 108 mhz through Ntune, and gained 245 3dmarks. then i overclocked my cards and got another 170 or so marks. thats not quite as much as id like to see out of the cards on the overclock i use, but its more than i had, so maybe i am bottlenecked.

btw, i went to 93.81 beta drivers, and they didnt work too well for me. so back to 93.71 i went.

[quote name='Mr.Goat' post='2256' date='Dec 11 2006, 10:40 PM']
i overclocked the cpu 108 mhz through Ntune, and gained 245 3dmarks. then i overclocked my cards and got another 170 or so marks. thats not quite as much as id like to see out of the cards on the overclock i use, but its more than i had, so maybe i am bottlenecked.

btw, i went to 93.81 beta drivers, and they didnt work too well for me. so back to 93.71 i went.
[/quote]

I can't say for certain whether or not the drivers will adversely affect your benchmark score, but I'm happy to hear you got positive results. What are the stock/overclocked speeds of your CPU and GPUs, just out of curiosity?

i overclocked the cpu 108 mhz through Ntune, and gained 245 3dmarks. then i overclocked my cards and got another 170 or so marks. thats not quite as much as id like to see out of the cards on the overclock i use, but its more than i had, so maybe i am bottlenecked.

btw, i went to 93.81 beta drivers, and they didnt work too well for me. so back to 93.71 i went.

I can't say for certain whether or not the drivers will adversely affect your benchmark score, but I'm happy to hear you got positive results. What are the stock/overclocked speeds of your CPU and GPUs, just out of curiosity?

[quote name='Exitios' post='2277' date='Dec 12 2006, 08:04 AM']
I can't say for certain whether or not the drivers will adversely affect your benchmark score, but I'm happy to hear you got positive results. What are the stock/overclocked speeds of your CPU and GPUs, just out of curiosity?
[/quote]

the cards are 565/1430 at stock clocks, the cpu is 2.4 (200x12).

i overclocked the cards to 610/1550 and the processor to 2508. (209x12) i overclocked the cpu through Ntune.

I can't say for certain whether or not the drivers will adversely affect your benchmark score, but I'm happy to hear you got positive results. What are the stock/overclocked speeds of your CPU and GPUs, just out of curiosity?

the cards are 565/1430 at stock clocks, the cpu is 2.4 (200x12).

i overclocked the cards to 610/1550 and the processor to 2508. (209x12) i overclocked the cpu through Ntune.

[quote name='Exitios' post='2277' date='Dec 12 2006, 08:04 AM']
I can't say for certain whether or not the drivers will adversely affect your benchmark score, but I'm happy to hear you got positive results. What are the stock/overclocked speeds of your CPU and GPUs, just out of curiosity?
[/quote]

I have a problem that I have not seen yet. I was running the 91.47 drivers for my twin 7800 GT OC's and my "normal" numbers were 425 on the core and 1050 on the memory clock. When I updated the driver to 93.71, the core clock remained the same, but the memory clock doubled to 2100 Mhz. What Happened? I run an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, but have not overclocked the system at all. Everything is stock. A friend said that the new drivers did something to make the PCI-E slots run as X16, but that's not supposed to be possible. In SLI Mode, my slots are supposed to kick down to X8 each. Can anybody tell me why my memory clock doubled just by updating the drivers? The control panel says my new frequencies are normal, and I get the same numbers when I ask it to find the optimal frequencies. I have tried knocking it back to 1050 manually, but the control panel warns me that that frequency is not optimal for my cards. Any answers would be greatly appreciated. I run 4 gigs of PC3200 DDR at 400 Mhz., the memory, CPU and HT are at stock, and all ASUS N.O.S. goodies are disabled. Thanks.

I can't say for certain whether or not the drivers will adversely affect your benchmark score, but I'm happy to hear you got positive results. What are the stock/overclocked speeds of your CPU and GPUs, just out of curiosity?

I have a problem that I have not seen yet. I was running the 91.47 drivers for my twin 7800 GT OC's and my "normal" numbers were 425 on the core and 1050 on the memory clock. When I updated the driver to 93.71, the core clock remained the same, but the memory clock doubled to 2100 Mhz. What Happened? I run an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, but have not overclocked the system at all. Everything is stock. A friend said that the new drivers did something to make the PCI-E slots run as X16, but that's not supposed to be possible. In SLI Mode, my slots are supposed to kick down to X8 each. Can anybody tell me why my memory clock doubled just by updating the drivers? The control panel says my new frequencies are normal, and I get the same numbers when I ask it to find the optimal frequencies. I have tried knocking it back to 1050 manually, but the control panel warns me that that frequency is not optimal for my cards. Any answers would be greatly appreciated. I run 4 gigs of PC3200 DDR at 400 Mhz., the memory, CPU and HT are at stock, and all ASUS N.O.S. goodies are disabled. Thanks.

[quote name='Tony Z' post='4182' date='Jan 6 2007, 10:49 PM']
I have a problem that I have not seen yet. I was running the 91.47 drivers for my twin 7800 GT OC's and my "normal" numbers were 425 on the core and 1050 on the memory clock. When I updated the driver to 93.71, the core clock remained the same, but the memory clock doubled to 2100 Mhz. What Happened? I run an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, but have not overclocked the system at all. Everything is stock. A friend said that the new drivers did something to make the PCI-E slots run as X16, but that's not supposed to be possible. In SLI Mode, my slots are supposed to kick down to X8 each. Can anybody tell me why my memory clock doubled just by updating the drivers? The control panel says my new frequencies are normal, and I get the same numbers when I ask it to find the optimal frequencies. I have tried knocking it back to 1050 manually, but the control panel warns me that that frequency is not optimal for my cards. Any answers would be greatly appreciated. I run 4 gigs of PC3200 DDR at 400 Mhz., the memory, CPU and HT are at stock, and all ASUS N.O.S. goodies are disabled. Thanks.

Tony Z
[/quote]

To make an 8x SLI motherboard perform at 16x SLI would require hardware changes, which is well beyond the power of a simple graphics driver. It's quite strange that your video card's memory is showing up twice of what it was before, but see if it displays the same speed when you remove your second card or disable SLI. Also, try rolling your drivers back to see if it makes a difference in your memory readouts as well.

I have a problem that I have not seen yet. I was running the 91.47 drivers for my twin 7800 GT OC's and my "normal" numbers were 425 on the core and 1050 on the memory clock. When I updated the driver to 93.71, the core clock remained the same, but the memory clock doubled to 2100 Mhz. What Happened? I run an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe, but have not overclocked the system at all. Everything is stock. A friend said that the new drivers did something to make the PCI-E slots run as X16, but that's not supposed to be possible. In SLI Mode, my slots are supposed to kick down to X8 each. Can anybody tell me why my memory clock doubled just by updating the drivers? The control panel says my new frequencies are normal, and I get the same numbers when I ask it to find the optimal frequencies. I have tried knocking it back to 1050 manually, but the control panel warns me that that frequency is not optimal for my cards. Any answers would be greatly appreciated. I run 4 gigs of PC3200 DDR at 400 Mhz., the memory, CPU and HT are at stock, and all ASUS N.O.S. goodies are disabled. Thanks.

Tony Z

To make an 8x SLI motherboard perform at 16x SLI would require hardware changes, which is well beyond the power of a simple graphics driver. It's quite strange that your video card's memory is showing up twice of what it was before, but see if it displays the same speed when you remove your second card or disable SLI. Also, try rolling your drivers back to see if it makes a difference in your memory readouts as well.

[quote name='Exitios' post='4184' date='Jan 6 2007, 11:45 PM']
To make an 8x SLI motherboard perform at 16x SLI would require hardware changes, which is well beyond the power of a simple graphics driver. It's quite strange that your video card's memory is showing up twice of what it was before, but see if it displays the same speed when you remove your second card or disable SLI. Also, try rolling your drivers back to see if it makes a difference in your memory readouts as well.
[/quote]

Thanks Exitios. I will try to back up to a previous driver. But it seems strange to me that I have not seen anyone else have a doubling of their memory clock speed due to the 93.71 drivers. I did as you suggested and disabled SLI and looked at the frequencies of only the one card. It was still 425 and 2100. I looked for optimal frequencies, and it up'ed them to 471 and 2170. Out of the box my cards were 425 and 1050, which is just slightly over the 400 and 1000 of stock cards. So disabling SLI did not make a difference. I will try going back to the 91.47 drivers. and see if my displayed numbers are restored. It's funny that this problem has not been seen as a glitch of some kind. Another alternative would be to go to the newer 93.81 driver, and see if my problem was just a fluke with that one driver.

To make an 8x SLI motherboard perform at 16x SLI would require hardware changes, which is well beyond the power of a simple graphics driver. It's quite strange that your video card's memory is showing up twice of what it was before, but see if it displays the same speed when you remove your second card or disable SLI. Also, try rolling your drivers back to see if it makes a difference in your memory readouts as well.

Thanks Exitios. I will try to back up to a previous driver. But it seems strange to me that I have not seen anyone else have a doubling of their memory clock speed due to the 93.71 drivers. I did as you suggested and disabled SLI and looked at the frequencies of only the one card. It was still 425 and 2100. I looked for optimal frequencies, and it up'ed them to 471 and 2170. Out of the box my cards were 425 and 1050, which is just slightly over the 400 and 1000 of stock cards. So disabling SLI did not make a difference. I will try going back to the 91.47 drivers. and see if my displayed numbers are restored. It's funny that this problem has not been seen as a glitch of some kind. Another alternative would be to go to the newer 93.81 driver, and see if my problem was just a fluke with that one driver.

[quote name='Tony Z' post='4235' date='Jan 7 2007, 04:06 PM']
Thanks Exitios. I will try to back up to a previous driver. But it seems strange to me that I have not seen anyone else have a doubling of their memory clock speed due to the 93.71 drivers. I did as you suggested and disabled SLI and looked at the frequencies of only the one card. It was still 425 and 2100. I looked for optimal frequencies, and it up'ed them to 471 and 2170. Out of the box my cards were 425 and 1050, which is just slightly over the 400 and 1000 of stock cards. So disabling SLI did not make a difference. I will try going back to the 91.47 drivers. and see if my displayed numbers are restored. It's funny that this problem has not been seen as a glitch of some kind. Another alternative would be to go to the newer 93.81 driver, and see if my problem was just a fluke with that one driver.
[/quote]

Exitios...new update. Disabling SLI did not do the trick. I uninstalled the 93.71 drivers, and rebooted the system with SLI still disabled. I then reinstalled the previous 91.47 drivers and ran coolbits, so I could see my frequencies in the Nvidia control panel. My frequencies were back to their stock numbers of 425 and 1050. Then I enabled SLI and the numbers stayed where they were. So by restoring a previous driver, I was able to get more normal clock numbers. I still have not looked for optimal frequencies. I think I'll leave it where it is for a while. BTW...I had problems with my system overheating and shutting down. These were traced to dust in the heatsinks, and an old tower. Yesteday I cleaned out the whole machine and put everything into a new efficient gaming tower. My GPU temps dropped from 65 - 67, down to 46 - 48...where they should be. So the frequency readings I was getting were false. I was not really running at those frequencies causing the system to over heat...which is what I had thought. It was just dust and poor cooling. Thanks for your reply.

Thanks Exitios. I will try to back up to a previous driver. But it seems strange to me that I have not seen anyone else have a doubling of their memory clock speed due to the 93.71 drivers. I did as you suggested and disabled SLI and looked at the frequencies of only the one card. It was still 425 and 2100. I looked for optimal frequencies, and it up'ed them to 471 and 2170. Out of the box my cards were 425 and 1050, which is just slightly over the 400 and 1000 of stock cards. So disabling SLI did not make a difference. I will try going back to the 91.47 drivers. and see if my displayed numbers are restored. It's funny that this problem has not been seen as a glitch of some kind. Another alternative would be to go to the newer 93.81 driver, and see if my problem was just a fluke with that one driver.

Exitios...new update. Disabling SLI did not do the trick. I uninstalled the 93.71 drivers, and rebooted the system with SLI still disabled. I then reinstalled the previous 91.47 drivers and ran coolbits, so I could see my frequencies in the Nvidia control panel. My frequencies were back to their stock numbers of 425 and 1050. Then I enabled SLI and the numbers stayed where they were. So by restoring a previous driver, I was able to get more normal clock numbers. I still have not looked for optimal frequencies. I think I'll leave it where it is for a while. BTW...I had problems with my system overheating and shutting down. These were traced to dust in the heatsinks, and an old tower. Yesteday I cleaned out the whole machine and put everything into a new efficient gaming tower. My GPU temps dropped from 65 - 67, down to 46 - 48...where they should be. So the frequency readings I was getting were false. I was not really running at those frequencies causing the system to over heat...which is what I had thought. It was just dust and poor cooling. Thanks for your reply.